The level of a person’s raw intelligence, as measured by aptitude tests such as IQ scores, is generally stable for most people during the course of their adulthood.

While it’s true that there are things you can do to fine tune your natural capabilities, such as doing brain exercises, solving puzzles, and getting optimal sleep—the amount of raw brainpower you have is difficult to increase in any meaningful or permanent way.

For those of us who constantly strive to be high-performers in our fields, this seems like bad news. If we can’t increase our processing power, then how can we solve life’s bigger problems as we move up the ladder?…Click to see full infographic.

Starbucks on Tuesday reported soaring cold drink sales in the United States, fueling an earnings and revenue beat for the company.

But the coffee chain also warned of a slower recovery in China, its second-largest market. It lowered its full-year forecast for the country’s same-store sales growth, despite raising its overall outlook for fiscal 2021 earnings per share.

The stock fell about 3% in extended trading after hitting a 52-week high before the markets closed.

Here’s what the company reported compared with what Wall Street was expecting, based on a survey of analysts by Refinitiv:

Earnings per share: $1.01 adjusted vs. 78 cents expected
Revenue: $7.5 billion vs. $7.29 billion expected
The coffee giant reported fiscal third-quarter net income of $1.15 billion, or 97 cents per share, up from a net loss of $678.4 million, or 58 cents per share a year earlier…read more.

Changes sent shockwaves across China’s $120bn private tutoring sector, leading to a huge sell-off in listed firms.

China’s private education firms are bracing for a “material” hit to their operations after Beijing announced new rules barring for-profit tutoring in core school subjects to ease financial pressures on families.

News of the rule changes on Friday, after a leaked document circulated on social media, sent shockwaves through China’s $120bn private tutoring sector and triggered a massive sell-off in the shares of companies including US-listed TAL Education Group and Gaotu Techedu.

Chinese regulators on Saturday published reforms that will fundamentally alter the business model of private firms teaching the school curriculum, as Beijing aims to overhaul a sector it says has been “hijacked by capital”. The new regulations ban firms that teach school curricula from making a profit, raising capital or going public. Regulators also said no new licences will be granted.

TAL said in its statement on Sunday that it expects the new rules to have a “material adverse impact on its after-school tutoring services … which in turn may adversely affect” its operations and prospects. It did not elaborate.

TAL’s New York-listed shares plunged 71 percent on Friday…read more.

The top executive for tobacco giant Philip Morris International told The Daily Mail Sunday that the company will stop selling cigarettes in the United Kingdom in the next 10 years.

The company’s CEO Jacek Olczak said the company’s iconic Marlboro brand of cigarettes will be taken off the shelves in the U.K. within the next decade.

“It will disappear. The first choice for consumers is they should quit smoking,” he told the outlet. “But if they don’t, the second best choice is to let them switch to the better alternatives.”

The development is just part of Philip Morris International’s reinvention as it abandons traditional tobacco products.

Olczak became the company’s CEO in May and plans to lead the company’s “smoke-free” transformation. He said the company’s new mission is to find and provide “less harmful alternatives to cigarettes” to the millions of people who would otherwise still smoke.

In May he said, “Our ambition is that more than half of our net revenues will come from smoke-free products in 2025.”…read more.